Writing Amalgamation

A consolidation of two or more entities into a single entity. This can be a consolidation of people, places, iconic items and even narratives. Amalgamation is a craft technique used by many writers when writing fictional elements that draw from real life experiences. 

Amalgamation Writing Exercise

Choose two of your favorite literary characters. Now, identify your worst personal characteristic, the characteristic that you pretend no one else knows about you so you don’t have to own it. Finally, amalgamate your two favorite literary characters with your worst characteristic and write a short scene with this amalgamated character.

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Sources

A Handbook to Literature. William Harmon.

“Cogito et Histoire de la Folie.” Jacques Derrida.

Eats Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. Lynne Truss.

The Elements of Style. William Strunk. 

New Oxford American Dictionary. Edited by Angus Stevenson and Christine A. Lindberg.

The Norton Anthology of World Literature. Martin Puchner, et al.

The Norton Introduction to Philosophy. Gideon Rosen and Alex Byrne.

Woe is I: The Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English. Patricia T. O’Conner

Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft. Janet Burroway, Elizabeth Stuckey-French & Ned Stuckey-French.

Writing the Other. Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward.

The Editors

Eckleburg was founded in 2010 as an online and print literary and arts journal. We take our title from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and include the full archives of our predecessor Moon Milk Review. Our aesthetic is eclectic, literary mainstream to experimental. We appreciate fusion forms including magical realist, surrealist, meta- realist and realist works with an offbeat spin. We value character-focused storytelling and language and welcome both edge and mainstream with punch aesthetics. We like humor that explores the gritty realities of world and human experiences. Our issues include original content from both emerging and established writers, poets, artists and comedians such as authors, Roxane Gay, Rick Moody, Cris Mazza, Steve Almond, Stephen Dixon, poets, Moira Egan and David Wagoner and actor/comedian, Zach Galifianakis.